Cubs, an all encompassing trip

Chris Rusin to Debut Tuesday Night!

There are very few things to get excited about when the team you obsess over is bad. One of the few things to get excited about are prospects making their Major League debut late in the season, and that is exactly what will happen tomorrow night in Milwaukee. The Cubs have announced that 25-year-old southpaw Chris Rusin will pitch tomorrow night. Rusin was drafted by the Cubs in the 2009 amateur draft in the fourth round, and he has made steady progress in the system since then. Here is a pretty stellar scouting report from John Arguello at Cubs Den…

“I’ve watched Rusin often in the minor leagues and most recently in the Dominican League and, if you like the art of pitching, he is a pleasure to watch. He works in the 88-90 mph range with his fastball and, according to Baseball America, has the best change-up and command in the system. Those two factors make his otherwise average stuff play up quite a bit. Rusin attacks the lower part of the strike zone, often jumping ahead of hitters early in the count. He keeps hitters off balance by constantly changing speeds and locations so that when he does “fire” a 90 mph fastball, it probably looks more like 95 mph. Despite a fringe average fastball, hitters often fail to get a good swing on it.

Rusin numbers in the Dominican Winter league are solid. He has a 2.84 ERA and a solid 2.8/7.5 walk to strikeout ratio. That ratio is pretty much in line with his minor league career rates of 1.93/7.05.

Rusin also has had excellent groundball to flyball ratios. This winter his G/F ratio is 3.45 and it was 3.61 at Iowa this past season. The solid strikeout and ground ball numbers bode well for a pitcher in Wrigley Field, especially when the wind is blowing out, as it often does in the summer.

He’s not a top end starter but he can certainly give you some solid innings at the back of the rotation, perhaps as soon as April of next season. He isn’t going to beat himself out there. His FIP numbers throughout his minor league career seem to indicate that if you put a good defense around him, he’ll keep you in the game consistently.”

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